


Clawfoot.

by his tongue and liver (doubleinfinity)



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Bathrooms, Bathtubs, Dialogue Heavy, Implied Sexual Content, Light BDSM, M/M, Slow Dancing, Trauma, True Love, more like references to it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 10:40:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16554236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubleinfinity/pseuds/his%20tongue%20and%20liver
Summary: OutlastChris | EddieHe pulls himself out of the bath tub.





	Clawfoot.

Eddie submerges from the bath to crawl onto the bathroom tile.

He whisks a hand through his wet hair, plastering it back, black follicles sliced to the paleness of his cheek bones, rivulets running in veins down his neck, raw and unearthed like the creature he doesn’t want to be. He scrambles backwards on his arms and legs until his back hits the wall.

Shaking, he runs his fingers up his jaw and cups his own face, making sure everything’s still there. He wipes the droplets of water off his eyelids. He throws another hand through his hair and keeps it there this time, gripping the strands.

Chris has seen him like this before, in different ways: naked. Stripped to the innermost bark. But always, like he said, in different ways:

Fresh from a fight (even a kill), his skin flushed and pores flared open. His mouth chasing Chris’ skin, feeling pretty and looking even better, bare body twisted on their bedroom sheets. But now he looks terrified. Even when he looks up and finds Chris’ eyes through the doorway, they stay wide.

Chris backtracks and walks into the bathroom. He looks down. Eddie is a mineral whittled down to its barest state. His DNA is achingly unobscured by any extra layers. His cheek bones threaten to slit Chris’ throat. His shaking body promises to unravel Chris from the inside.

In one motion, he kneels down and grabs Eddie’s face in both his hands.

“Tell me,” he says firmly, because if he lets this moment pass, Eddie will crush the words beneath his teeth until they are a powder that can never be reformed. His face is hot underneath Chris’ thumbs. He might be running a fever.

Eddie doesn’t charm him with a lazy smile. He doesn’t throw his head back and scowl. He meets Chris where he is expected.

“My father never loved me,” he answers transparently, darting his own hands up. His fingers wrap around Chris’ wrist; he digs his fingernails into the flesh. “He had two fists and one dick and no heart.”

The water drips from Eddie’s elbows all over Chris’ clothes. He doesn’t look angry. Just afraid.

With the force of an army, Chris pulls one of Eddie’s hands away and presses it to his own neck. The hot, rolling thrum of his pulse echoes underneath the older’s fingers. Eddie feels the blonde’s heart throbbing in his hand.

“Choke me,” Chris tells him. “Feel how deep mine runs.”

Sometimes, when Chris is the one with teary eyes, broken back down into a terribly small creature that can’t suffer the weight of it anymore, he tells Eddie to fuck him with his hand around his throat, squeezing the air from his lungs until he sees spots and then wakes back up in the mercy of Eddie’s overwhelming authority. It is a pleasure he knows not the likes of. But that isn’t why he’s offering it now.

This time, Eddie clenches his fingers once misleadingly, but then softens them again, patting Chris’ jaw with the back of his hand. He arches his back against the wall and slides himself to his feet, bringing Chris with him.

“Runneth over,” Eddie confirms, his voice somber but laced with a growl, the kind of vicious admiration Chris never knew he was desperate to receive.

They slow dance over the puddles of water that Eddie sloshed onto the tile, his rested head on Chris’ shoulder until the demon he is sinks out through his fingernails and pools away. The terror calms. The sadness eases. Chris’ body grows warmer the longer he leans on it.

He drinks and there is no bottom.


End file.
